Workflow and business process management are not new. No organization of any size can survive without them. Computer applications have tried to include them. This works when the business process is wholly contained within the application. What happens when processes span applications?

One alternative would be to spend the time and energy to build the comprehensive mega-application that included all business processes for all parts of the organization. The risks associated with such a project are so great that very few organizations would undertake this project.

An alternative to this approach are specialized workflow management systems. These are sometimes known as Service Delivery Management systems. These enable workflows that cross application and organizational boundaries. These are the modern replacement for the routing slip or traveler.

The Request Management System (rm^s) is designed to do exactly this. rm^s contains four elements that make it ideal for implementing BPM solutions that cross application and organizational boundaries.